


Back to Back They Faced Eachother

by seazu



Series: Gallavich Week 2017 [2]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Everyone is Dead, GW2017, GW2017A, Gallavich Week 2017, Last Men on Earth, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, apart form ian and mickey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 01:29:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11025738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seazu/pseuds/seazu
Summary: Gallavich Week Day 2 - Times when Ian and Mickey had eachother's backs.Post-Apocalyse AU: Ian and Mickey emerge after years underground and find they're the last two alive.





	Back to Back They Faced Eachother

It’s been years since the last time they’d seen daylight. Since the last time they’d breathed unprocessed air. Neither could remember it smelling this putrid.

 

“I thought it’d be… fresher,” Ian says, standing by Mickey, taking in the empty overgrown streets.

“Yeah, me too. No factories or whatever stinkin’ it up.”

Ian hums in agreement, turning around slowly to look behind them.

“I guess it’s whatever shit they pumped into the air,” Mickey muses, tying a bandana around his mouth and nose. “Should we even be breathing this shit?”

“I can’t stay down there any more, choking on poison has to be better,” Ian says, doing the same with a scarf. 

“Yeah,” Mickey says. “You think anyone else made it?”

Ian doesn’t answer at first, just looks. There’s a silence that fills the space between them and around them. It stretches on for miles. There’s just nothing: no wind, no cars, no people or animals, no movement. No hum of electricity even. “It smells like death.”

~

“Most of this shit is years out of date,” Mickey says, wrinkling his nose as he holds up a bag of cheetos from the shelf. 

“You suddenly startin’ to get picky now? I’ve seen you eat moldy bread, man,” Ian retorts from across the store, toting a new backpack he’s ready to fill with food, after they’d raided a sports store for weapons and better equipment for walking and camping.

“That’s different, peal that shit off and it’s fine, for a few days, this is just…”

“Stick to the canned stuff, then. Properly sealed, anything the chemicals wouldn’t get into.”

Mickey nods and starts filling his own backpack with whatever he can find. 

~

“You’d think we would have run into someone by now,” Mickey says, digging into his pork n’ beans by the fire Ian lit.

“Maybe they’re still underground.”

“We can’t be the last two, right?”

“If we are Humanity’s fucked.”

Mickey snorts, “you reckon if we run into a chick we’d have to bang her just for the sake of the species.”

“You can, no way I could even get it up.”

“Seriously dude, for the sake of Man-Fucking-kind.”

“What’s Mankind ever done for me? We’d be better off wiped out.”

“Fuck, that’s dark.”

~

Most of what they find of the formerly living is their remains in various states of decay. In more exposed areas they were little more than sparse meat and bits of clothes clinging to bone. They both dream of it, but neither of them speak about it. They seem to take turns waking up in a sweaty panic after being pursued by corpses, and then press themselves closer to the other. 

At least when they wake up, everyone is dead. No one is coming back to life. 

~

“You okay?” Mickey says, hesitating as he comes behind Ian. Ian who is crouched by the floor in another stranger’s kitchen, Mickey can’t see what he’s holding until Ian turns to look at him. His face is streaked with tears but he isn’t making any noises, he just looks at Mickey helplessly.

“They’re dead, Mick. They’re all fucking dead. Lip, Fiona, Debbie, Carl -  _ Liam _ .” It’s only then he chokes and his chest heaves in a jerking motion. 

Mickey swallows and crouches by him, putting an arm around his shoulders and pulling him in. 

It’s been weeks since they surfaced from the bunker and they’d searched the town long since, but they’d put off the idea that they’d lost their families this long. Ian just couldn’t hold the weight of it anymore it seemed.

Ian rests his head in the crook of Mickey’s shoulder. He smells like sweat and dirt. His musk is thicker than he could ever remember it being. They couldn’t trust the water to not be contaminated, and they’d run out of purification tablets, saved them for drinking water. 

He raises his hands after a few moments of him savouring the contact and Mickey moves so he can see. “Fuck, you’re bleeding Ian, what were you doing?” He jumps up to find towels to wrap them in while he finds a proper bandage. And then he sees the crude little cross Ian had fashioned out of taped together popsicle sticks and chopsticks. The knife on the counter was bloodied and stained the wood where he had been carving out a name. 

“I wanna go home,” Ian says quietly, sounding small. It scares Mickey.

“No one’s there, Ian, you said it yourself.”

“I need to do this,” he says, sounding more firm this time. It’s enough.

“Okay, man. Let me just… let me get this,” he’s careful as he wipes away the blood, finding the sources and putting bandaids on for him. 

They spend the rest of the evening carving names and making crosses. Nine for Ian, four for Mickey. 

~

The house looks just like how he left it, he thinks, and yet completely alien. After so many years spent in that bunker, it doesn’t even feel like home. Wallace looks like any other road in this new wasteland. And the Gallagher House is a museum. Ian steels himself for the worst, and it takes them a while of searching the house before they find his family. In the basement, clinging together, the smallest in the middle. The smell is worse than outside, somehow worse than anything they’ve come across yet.

Ian was not prepared. Even Mickey chokes up, not from the sulphuric air, but from the image. His throat feels hot, and too small. He turns and watches Ian dash upstairs, takes a moment before he follows him, crouches by him again on the porch and puts an arm around his shoulders. 

“Can you… do me a favor?” he says, treading carefully, never having been good at being delicate. 

Ian looks at him, but Mickey gets the sense he doesn’t really  _ see  _ him.

“Would you do mine, if I do yours?”

Ian looks like he’s going to protest, but some niggling part of him, smaller than the pride that says it should be  _ him  _ that buries his family, the more insistent part, tells him he wouldn’t be able to move them. Still, he shakes his head. “Just… help me dig the graves, and I’ll move yours if you help me dig theirs, too.”

“Deal.”

~

“Do you wanna say anything?”

“I ain’t got nothing to say that they didn’t already know.”

Mickey claps a hand on Ian’s back that he hopes is supportive. They stand like that for an age.

~

They keep walking, just for something to do, occasionally raiding stores for supplies or sleeping in abandoned houses and buildings to avoid having to set up camp in the streets or parks. There’s something odd about starting a fire in a stranger’s living-room when they pick a house without a real fireplace. They try to avoid it where possible because it means leaving windows and doors open everywhere to avoid choking on the smoke it gives off, which is almost as cold as not having a fire at all.

“It’s just like smoking indoors you get used to it.”

“Mick this is like forty people smoking twenty an hour all day every day, you cannot get used to it.”

~

The sunsets are different. There’s a bigger brighter range of colour. Used to be Ian was the one obsessed with taking pictures of the sunrise, but the last few weeks he’s missed most of them. He doesn’t move much at all. Mickey found them a house, somewhere with a boiler so he could get them some heating, a lot of blankets, built up a food supply there. He chalks it up to Ian’s family. He doesn’t try to force him to move anymore. 

He ventures out in search of more supplies, really he thinks he’s just trying to find something that will cheer Ian up enough to get him to say a few words, recently he’s felt like the last man on Earth and that’s a harrowing thought. He’d do anything to get Ian back with him. Somehow being ignored is worse than being genuinely alone. 

He barely gets out of the front garden before he sees it. Hairless apart from a few patches here and there, pink and mottled grey skin sniffing at the ground a little way away from him. It’s a dog, definitely a dog, probably only a few years old, but it’s been living here since it happened, so that has to mean something. Sure it looks pretty fucked but it’s alive, and doing well. 

Fuck maybe a fucking dog is exactly what Ian needs. 

Mickey crouches, making squeaking noises to get it’s attention, little, “ _ here boy _ ”s and “ _ come’on boy _ ”s to call him over. It was a little while before he heard the noise, the slopping noise and saw that it wasn’t sniffing. Not exactly.

He finally got its attention, and it turned, four eyes looking him over, two mouths, one dripping with saliva, bits of meat hanging from between it’s malformed teeth. 

“Holy fuckin’ Cerebus’ balls,” is all he manages to say before the beast gallops towards him, charging into his chest and sending Mickey onto his back. He’s winded instantly, but some instinct in him manages to tell his arms to shoot up in time to brace his forearms against it’s necks. Two snapping snarling mouths clamp the air an inch away from his face, and his strength is dwindling quickly. Their breath is foul and putrid, worse than any corpse they’ve come across yet. It makes him feel sick to his stomach instantly, but he can barely process it. 

All he can think is  _ this is it, this is how I die. Mauled by Satan’s fuckin hellhound. How long until Ian even finds out. If he ever finds out. They might eat me alive and there won’t even be a body to bury. I’ll just be radioactive dogshit.  _

His strength continues to wane, they manage to get too close sometimes. He doesn’t even feel the claws gashing at his arms and sides, too focused on the heads, the roaring sound ripping from their shared chest. Bits of decay spat at him and sticking to his face. He wants to cry, thinks he might be crying already. He feels completely pathetic, but it’s the end and he can do whatever he wants at the end. 

It feels like his arm is going to snap under the weight of the brute, and then-  _ bang. _

There’s an explosion of red and heat slaps his face and the face of the remaining dog-head, he tries not to open his eyes or mouth, but he can still taste blood all over him, smell it as bad as the rot. And then another  _ bang  _ and the weight on him doubles. 

“Jesus Mick are you okay? What the fuck was that?” There are noises of effort, and the weight gradually shifts off of him, and he knows he could breathe again but still doesn’t want to open his eyes or mouth. Ian seems to understand this because he can feel himself being wiped clean by something soft and he waits as long as he can before he gasps for air and his eyes shoot open. Ian is topless, holding a bloody rag and crouched over him. “Mickey?”

His chest burns, and he looks for the dog, a headless corpse now, dead like everything else. Ian’s gun sat near the body. 

And in the face of everything, all Mickey can think about, all he can say is, “you’re up!”

 


End file.
